FOSS Patents reports that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a notice preliminarily ruling that Apple's massive iPhone patent popularly referred to as "the Steve Jobs patent" invalid in its entirety upon reexamination.

The patent, issued as Patent No. 7,479,949, had been granted in January 2009 and incorporated several prior patent applications dating back to September 2006 before the company publicly unveiled the device. Steve Jobs is listed as the first inventor on the patent, and FOSS Patents notes that it is probably the most famous of the over 300 patents credited at least in part to Jobs.

Quote:

Some people say that first Office actions are partial because they are based only on submissions made by those challenging the patent, and many examiners like to take a tough position early on in order to enable and require the patentee to present the strongest arguments in favor of validity. But it would be a mistake to underestimate the significance of a first Office action. Also, a complete rejection of all claims of a given patent is potentially more devastating than one affecting only some claims.

Apple has asserted the patent against a number of its competitors, including Samsung and Motorola, and an ultimate finding of invalidity in the reexamination process would substantially weaken Apple's cases against those companies, although it is far from the only weapon in Apple's patent arsenal.

Generally, some of a patent's individual claims are invalidated, not the entire patent. I thought MacRumors got it wrong but I looked it up, the entire Jobs patent is indeed (preliminarily) invalidated. I'm no patent attorney, but I would think that that's pretty darn uncommon (unless you have a patent with only a couple claims).

My guess is that when they revisit this, and deem some claims valid and others invalid.

I'm so sick of this crap. How can they grant a patent, and then nullify it years later? Whats the point of getting the patent in the first place? No one out there should invent anything because people will just steal it from you. Talk about stifling innovation.

I find this amazing. How can you retract a patent? The decision process to award it in the first place would be pretty involved, and once awarded that is that! You can't just change your mind as the rest of the world catches up!

I'm so sick of this crap. How can they grant a patent, and then nullify it years later? Whats the point of getting the patent in the first place? No one out there should invent anything because people will just steal it from you. Talk about stifling innovation.

The problem is that patent officers have so much patents to review and too little time to review them, hence sometimes they miss details. It's only when opposition pops up and digs up prior art or claims obviousness that the reviews go ahead and sometimes, patents are invalidated after being granted.

If the USPTO had more examiners, they could be more torough in the reviews. But then again, even after many rejections and amendments by the submitter, it becomes tedious and grants go through.

__________________"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."
-- Pericles

I find this amazing. How can you retract a patent? The decision process to award it in the first place would be pretty involved, and once awarded that is that! You can't just change your mind as the rest of the world catches up!

Fight this Apple. This is wrong.

There are 2 grounds to invalidation :

- Prior art
- Obviousness.

Obviousness should be detected during the initial patent review by the examiner. The problem is that obviousness is for someone trained in the art. All patent examiners aren't electronics engineers or software developers. So when a patent holder asserts their patent against a competitor, obviousness can be argued by actual experts trained in the art with supporting evidence, things the examiners might not have considered.

For prior art, well obviously, it came before the patent, so the patent was not novell and should never have been granted. So really, it's not that the world caught up, it's that the world had the invention granted in the patent before the patent was filed! It should not have been granted either. But then again, some prior art can be pretty obscure and it doesn't surface until someone really does his research, as when a patent holder asserts the patent against a competitor.

So really, it's great that patents can be invalidated this way, so that if they were granted in error, no foul is done and the patent holder suddenly can't monopolize something that was available to someone else before.

__________________"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."
-- Pericles